The Most Useless Thing in the US? Political Parties

Time to update slightly my original post about the evils of political parties.  In the first sixteen+ years of this century they have certainly not become any more useful than when John Adams said:

There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.  (could be a headline anywhere, 2016)

or George Washington said (excerpted version appeared in my earlier post):

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty. 

Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind, (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight,) the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.
It serves always to distract the Public Councils, and enfeeble the Public Administration. It agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.

There is an opinion, that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the Government, and serve to keep alive the spirit of Liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; and in Governments of a Monarchical cast, Patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in Governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And, there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be, by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.

Most of the Founding Fathers, and the first four presidents of the United States all agree - political parties are highly undesirable and will be the downfall of this "great experiment" that is the United States.

In my opinion, there are two things that cause me to disregard a statement completely and out of hand that is made in the public forum: 1) an obvious logical fallacy or grievous error in reasoning (see any news site comments online or any letters-to-the-editor page for a plethora of examples); 2) any statement by a political party member or backer.

Membership or partisanship in any political party of any kind by anyone immediately reduces my respect or estimation of the individual's intellect or usefulness to zero.   Joining a political party means surrendering forever that one thing that makes humans special -- the ability to think, reason, and react to our world and adjust our understanding and expectations to meet a constantly evolving and changing reality.  It is an admission that "I am a non-thinking, barely functional idiot who only responds to money, and I will follow my chosen party's platform no matter how immoral, un-American, against the country's best interests, or un-constitutional it may be". 

Political parties actively discourage any such exercise of intelligence, and thus have driven the US into an impotent, second-world status and toppled it from a position of true leadership and dominance that it enjoyed immediately after World War II.  Whether that status was truly earned through intellect, noble deeds, and desire to see all humankind progress or was just a more genteel version of self-centered econo-terrorism abetted by eco-terrorism is a topic for interesting discussion at another time.

The current high point is that political parties are rapidly losing influence in the US and they don't realize it.  They still have a tight, monopolistic grip on the so-called election process, but in a positive sign the ranks of independents are constantly growing in recent years, making up a greater percentage of the electorate.

The political parties create a two-year charade of choosing the presidential candidates, but in reality they are eliminating the majority of intelligent, thoughtful voters through their limiting participation to the "factions" (see Washington above). Other first world countries easily accommodate elections that change governments in a few months time.  The only purpose for extending our election cycle is to improve the ability of "big money" to flood the airwaves with false advertising.

If you want to (or need to) be coddled by an always-rigid, nothing ever changes cocoon of ignorance - join a religion...they are hurting for members/followers/sycophants/mind slaves too.

If you really want to participate as a human being in the greatest experiment in human governance ever conceived -- then register to vote, and actually vote!  But as a thinking, reasoning Independent - not as a brain-dead sycophant of others!

Come On Thinkers!

I have always thought that political party members were among the least qualified or suited to make important decisions for the country, and one of the few bits of good news as we enter into another intelligence-insulting, criminally-supported campaign season is that more and more people are agreeing.

Pew Research reports that since the end of the Bush Administration, more Americans have begun calling themselves Independents than either of the two idiot parties (err...I mean political parties) - the highest percentage in 75 years of polling. Furthermore, the trend is continuing upward while the parties continue their downward spiral in acolytes.

Full Report Details

A Weird Week of Republicans Shooting Their Mouths Off

Not exactly what David Brooks said, but close.  Another edition of Shields and brooks that gets to the heart of what really counts in the bizarre and sometimes very off-base stories that the media chooses to cover.  


Personally, I prefer the days before trending "Twits" determined a news organization's focus and people like Ben Bradlee insisted on quality journalism, even if it took awhile. 


Although Shields and Brooks don't mention it, I have a real problem when "Twit readers" demand that Brian Williams, the 'talking head' that reads/introduces the 22 minutes of news every night be 'credible', far beyond any of the people (mostly anonymous) whose barely literate Twits they eagerly consume around the clock. 


Anyway, back to another excellent discussion between Shields and Brooks:

Guantanamo's Wreckage

I have recently become involved in a BBC effort that solicits commentary and analysis of BBC-produced programs.  It gave me the opportunity to listen to this documentary broadcast on the Guantanamo Bay prison - but  with the emphasis on prisoners who have been released.

It is a program that does not spoon-feed the listener the viewpoint they are supposed to be adopting like so many US "cable news" programs these days.  You actually need to think here - the story is told through the experiences of real people who were incarcerated at Guantanamo.  The story eventually tells itself very well, and it is not a pretty one for US citizens who in a very real way are responsible for the unjust, inhuman, and quite frankly invented reasons for keeping some of these people there at all.

The Mystique of War

This insightful TED Talk by Sebastian Junger, a journalist who has covered many war zones is well worth watching.  This is why our politicians need to stop sending our young people off to far corners of the world on ill-designed quests for the politician's satisfaction of some abstract ideology, and then assuming that everything is going to be just fine and there will be no after-effects from the experience.

Thanks George and Dick!

There is no way to say for certain if Iraq would have fallen apart on its own by now, but there is very little doubt that the Molotov cocktail thrown into the country that accelerated things tremendously was George II's ill-advised, probably illegal, and trumped-up invasion of Iraq.  Not to mention the huge toll it took and is still taking, and will be taking on this country for decades to come.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-27789229

We Can't Do Anything About This?

Sometimes even the tongue-in-cheek publication The Onion hits a truthful nail square on the head.  Look at this about the epidemic of gun violence sweeping the US.

Six Amendments (Book Review)

I just read an interesting new book by retired Supreme Court Justice Stephens.  I may have mentioned elsewhere that the Supreme Court is interesting to me because no other nation has anything that equals it, and while it is maddening idiotic at time (read Dred Scott or Citizens United for examples), they also over time have been the steadying hand since we are working with what was supposed to be a "temporary" Constitution that is definitely showing major fissures in trying to deal with the real flat world. 

Here is my review from Goodreads:

Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution by John Paul Stevens
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Excellent book and well-written. You should know something about Constitutional law and the Supreme Court (NOT what you read or see in the media which is nearly all wrong) in order to enjoy this book fully.

Justice Stevens' recommendations for amendments are not extremely radical, rather they mostly patch up some gaping holes or some colossally misguided Supreme Court decisions.

In either case the Founding Fathers would be aghast at the fact that more has not been done to fix their little "temporary starter" constitution - most of them expected it to last for a couple of decades at most and then be replaced by a more substantive and encompassing document based on experience to that point. Instead, the US has taken the band-aid approach -- using a crazy quilt of Supreme Court decisions and popular-at-the-time Congressional patches to hammer it into something that is at times unrecognizable in practice.

Justice Stevens recognizes the flaws, and makes some credible and interesting proposals to fix them.

View all my reviews

Calling BS on The Republicans This Time

I saw a fascinating documentary last night.  It is Robert Reich's Inequality for All.  He served in various administrations of both parties for all of his career but he can tell you about that. 

I knew about many of the facts and economic trends in the documentary beforehand but what surprised me was that it started much earlier.  The economic trend of minimizing/eliminating the middle class goes back to at least 1970.  In other words, my entire working life has been spent as part of a middle class that has now shrunk almost to the point of invisibility.

He punches holes in one of the biggest Republican lies in current vogue - the 'impairment of the job creators' through asking them to ... well actually pay their current taxes for one thing, or pay a rate that is commensurate with the huge wealth increases they are reaping without contributing anything to the economy...and certainly not jobs.

Reich makes a compelling point that the middle class represents the true 'job creators'. After all, I don't think a CEO of a large corporation making, oh, $90 million per year is going to go out January 1st and say "I am going to create some jobs this year so I can make less money next year." 

No, for the large majority of American businesses, demand = job creation, and the middle class is overwhelmingly responsible for demand in this country and economy.  Of course, if the middle class ceases to exist or suffers huge losses in real income as they have since 1970....there is no demand, and no job creation.  Sound like any economies you know of?

This is a well done, very factual documentary and is done without the usual preachiness of someone on a pulpit.  One gets the sense that Reich is done with Washington politics and wants to very much leave it in his rear view mirror, but because he understands what is going on, he cares about what is going on.

I don't give a fig about voter ID to vote in US elections, but I really think it should be a requirement for every American voter to sit down and watch this documentary and understand it before casting another misguided vote based on the most charismatic candidate, the richest, or heaven forbid based on political party membership!

Update: That whooshing sound you heard was the Canadian middle class zooming by the US, eh?

The Ugly Pus of the Bush II Dynasty Starts to Ooze

Some of the really ugly aspects of the Bush II realm are starting to emerge finally, and they are presenting the Obama administration with some ugly choices in some areas because the administration is basically bound to defend the acts of prior administrations in most cases. 

One of the ugliest is the CIA's "role" in the Bush-era war on terror, which paints neither the US government, nor the CIA in particular in a particularly flattering light.

Inequality in the Land of Equality

This is one of the best Shields and Brooks episodes in recent memory.  They are basically in agreement that income inequality is serious and unsupportable but seem uncertain about how or if government has the will to actually do anything about it.

I especially appreciated Mark Shield's observation about the last four years...95% of the US wealth flowed to the top 1% of the individuals who own 33% of the available stock.  Doesn't sound like socialism to me either, Mark!

 

Revolving DC Door Works Both Ways

The "revolving door" in Washington usually refers to people in DC "retiring" to cushy lobbyist or advisory jobs from posts of influence (or sometimes only a lowly Congressperson). 

But this particular spinning door actually works both ways...as this Center For Public Integrity article notes when an industry insider gets to "oversee" the industry he was an "insider" (and partier) to. 

The folks at CPI do great work and you should read their reports regularly (and support them if able), but sometimes it must seem to them like such an uphill battle.... 

Pentagon Waste - Carrying on a Proud Tradition

I have written elsewhere in this blog about the proudly un-auditable Pentagon waste machine that shreds (or just plain loses) taxpayer dollars each and every day and seems very unconcerned about it.  (Of course, all they have to do is ask the Repubs for more I guess). 

Reuters is now taking its own look at it, putting a very human face on some of the very real victims -- US service men and women.  Then in the second part they outline how the Pentagon literally cannot keep track of anything...not just money.

Another Republican Black Eye

Like most items that make it into the "BS-verse" (sorry, the Internet), the whole flap about health insurance policies being cancelled as a result of the ACA is overblown, misleading, and says more about the ignorance of the "reporters" than anything.  

In reality, the people who get letters from their insurance companies 'canceling' their policies are finding out they are much, much better off under the ACA.   Sorry Repubs -- another black eye for you! 

Wake Up Call

Thomas Friedman has written about a new phenomenon, a new view of the United States from abroad that is not flattering.  I won't steal his thunder, but I actually had a much earlier, similar experience in about 2003 though I could be off by a year.  I was on a business trip to Taiwan and our hosts took me out for dinner to one of the biggest buffet-style "mix and match" restaurants I have ever seen.  All the choices and ingredients were raw and fresh, you chose the individual items, then they were prepared and brought to your table.  The selection was huge, like a large farmer's market.

Anyway, as we sat down at our table the primary host from the company we were working with sat down across from me and asked (in impeccable English since English classes are mandatory from elementary school onward)..."Why did you elect such a stupid President?".

People in other countries tend to look up to the US, and are disappointed/dismayed when they perceive that something "stupid" is happening, which is part of the theme of Friedman's column.

As for me...I foolishly started down the road of pointing out that the American people had NOT actually elected the "stupid president", but then that led to how the Supreme Court in supposedly the greatest democracy in the world had "appointed" a president. 

Fortunately, just when it was getting really confusing (and embarrassing)...the food arrived!     

If You Want a Concrete Reason for the Shenanigans in DC

I know....what ISN'T shenanigans in Washington DC these days? 

I am talking specifically about the Repubs and their particular form of insanity.  (Insanity of course being defined as doing the same crazy or self-destructive thing over and over again and expecting a different result).  Their prolonged childish hissy-fit over the AHCA does have a dark side to it...one that I suspect has a great deal of truth in it, possibly even the primary reason for their insanity.  Keep in mind this analysis is written by a former executive at one of the nation's largest health insurers who finally decided he had seen enough:

http://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/09/30/13474/beginning-end-major-health-insurers

Hope for Research

The US (particularly Washington DC) seems to be intent on proving the maxim that we are a country "designed by geniuses so it can be run by idiots".  

Thomas Friedman says there is hope however, you just have to look for it....get away from the mindless drivel of Twitter and the banality of most of the Internet and really look for it.  There is a lot of 'hope research' going on in the world.  Not just the US, but the world.  The nature of how things work and even 'work' itself is changing -- the world really is flat, and my only hope is that we clear out the idiots in Washington and their 1930s mindset soon enough so that we can join in as partners, or we will for sure be left behind.  

The Syria Intervention Decision

This seems to be dominating the news (although as usual the rest of the world keeps moving on and there are other things happening). 

I am kind of lukewarm on either option, but leaning toward not doing anything at this point.  Before I explain that, I want to say that I do feel sorry for President Obama in one particular way though. 

This in a way is yet another direct legacy of the most miserable administration in my lifetime...that of George Bush II that have bedeviled this current administration from the get-go.  Once again he is left with a repercussion of George II declaring war on Iraq, a very sacred and revered (and tenuously balanced) country to those of the Muslim faith.

The number of outright constant lies and fabrications that spewed out of that White House from that administration has cascaded into a massive distrust of anything concerning America going to war or even just dropping a few bombs on people who probably really deserve it.  Of course there are also a number of people who either want to see the first black president fail, or just like going to war and/or shooting off guns in general.

I am leaning against it because I am going back to the founding fathers, who wisely counseled not only against political parties but also 'foreign entanglements', and I would like to see us get out of the role of "world policeman". 

The strategy/dodge of "hiding behind the UN" is laughable and pathetic - the UN is as completely impotent as it has ever been, and the UN Security Council (containing both Russia and China) is the worst joke of all.

If the rest of the world is really outraged about the goings-on in Syria...then let them step up and take the wheel...and the historical rap for it.

Cutting to the Chase

One of the best Shields and Brooks segments from the Friday PBS NewsHour particularly concerning the train wreck that we laughingly call our Congress.  I am not going to pretend that I can add anything to their intelligent conversation, except to point out yet again that the mere existence of political parties is at the heart of the problem.  

Watch Shields, Brooks on the Fluster Over Filibusters, N.Y. Bids on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

Book Review - Marching Toward Hell

I thought I would share a book review of mine from a few years ago that has been fairly well-received on Goodreads.  It is by a very knowledgeable author with a lot of experience in the Middle East.  If you want to understand why the US is so reviled in that part of the world and why everything we do over there seems to make matters worse...well, read on:

Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq by Michael Scheuer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A very slow, and at times frustrating read. Slow because sometimes you need to just stop and process the information, and a lot of the information/wisdom the author has to share is in the footnotes, of which there are many. Frustrating when you come to fully realize how completely, totally, and utterly wrong the US policy in the Middle East has been.

This is a book written by a justifiably angry, passionate man, who invested 20+ years at the CIA specializing in the Middle East, among other things creating and running the bin Laden unit and watching Clinton ignore opportunity after opportunity to take bin Laden out, or Bush II execute a half-hearted, ineffective war in Afghanistan and follow it up with a pointless, equally ineffective invasion of Iraq, while bin Laden celebrated his good fortune and the strategic victory that Iraq represented.

Indeed, one of the things I learned from this book is that bin Laden's publicly stated goals not only are very different from what US politicians spout in sound bites for the cameras, but also that they are very consistent over time and make a certain amount of sense relative to the realities of Islam and the Middle East.

Reading this book (and the others by the author) also taught me that there is no politician of either party that can be trusted to give anything like a true accounting of the events leading up to, including, and after 9/11. The 'ruling elite' (a contemptuous term used a lot in the book) of the US in both the executive and congressional branches is in either mass denial, or unfathomable ignorance and stupidity, or both. They are also guilty of a mass paranoia about what other countries think - they are convinced that we have to fight 'polite wars' where civilians are never hurt and a minimal amount of damage is done to the country, largely to keep in the good graces of European governments and special-interest voting blocs at home. The author makes a compelling, if squirm-inducing case for why we need to bring the full force and power of the US military to bear when it is used without tempering it, or apologizing for it.

The book has one interesting theme throughout, which the author returns to again and again, and finishes the book with -- and that is how far from the principles set forth by the founders of the American republic our policies in the Middle East have been...in many cases directly contrary to the wishes and warnings of the very gentlemen whose memories the neoconservative politicians who got us into this mess just love to invoke when they thunder forth about spreading American democracy anywhere and everywhere, appropriate or not.


View all my reviews